Could be.
But this culture of complacency has been established by not getting the proper managers post Pep. Somebody to keep the standards up and not take any shit, to keep that belief in the team that hard work and motivation is the way to win things in football.
The standards of what is acceptable in terms of speed, intensity and work rate in this team have declined from season to season as the players started to set them, instead of the managers. Right now, the manager is a puppet who says dumb things in press conferences. That's all he is for us.
You know what the fluctuations in this team's performances actually are? The mood of the main members in the team, the old timers, on that given day. If they are in a good mood and feel like playing and running, we win, sometimes by scoring a lot. If not, we lose. At home, they are usually in a much better mood than away. Just like we feel better as people when we are at home on our comfy couch, as opposed to visiting some relatives away form home. These kinds of shifting moods which determine how football games happen at Barcelona is what coaching is supposed to prevent. One of the main jobs in coaching is to move the influence from moods and variable things which are not under your control (how a star player feels on a given day), to things which are rehearsed, planned in a way which makes them almost automatic. You can see Valverde's expression on his face, and in press comferences. Most of the times he has no idea what is happening. He has no idea if this day Suarez, Pique, Messi, Busi, Alba will feel like playing or they will treat the game as a friendly where running is optional.
Most of the managers we had never managed to prevent these moods. Some fought with them with moderate success, like Lucho. Some, on the opposite spectrum, even supported these moods, hoping the players would feel like playing more often than not.
